ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. -- Here's a dirty little secret of the advertising industry: Professional athletes can be divas too.
Athletes have been pitching products in TV commercials for almost as long as there have been TV commercials. They act. They sing. They dance. They toss their game-worn jerseys to well-meaning kids who have reminded them of their long-lost innocence and they laugh -- holding the product they're sponsoring label out, of course -- as choirs sing infectious jingles about how all the regular people at home wish they could be a little bit more like their heroes.
One thing they don't do all that often in commercials is, well, play sports. There are plenty of reasons why this is the case, but one that's less talked about is that some athletes and their agents come on set with established constraints. It's why so many commercials for sports drinks and athletic wear consist of sluggers pointing their bats to the camera and basketball players setting up for slow-motion free throws.
It's the way it is. Unless you're working with Josh Allen.
"Some athletes will be like 'I'll give you three throws' or 'I'll kick the ball four times' or 'I'll run at no more than 50%' or whatever," said Alex Bower, former creative director at TBWA/Chiat/Day who wrote Allen's 2024 Gatorade campaign. "Josh, we shot him in L.A., it was a hot day. He gave us a lot of takes of him running lines and throwing the ball full pelt. He committed. We kind of used his shots heavily in the edit because it looked real because he was giving it 100%."
Allen, the Buffalo Bills quarterback and betting favorite to win the NFL's MVP award (+280 on DraftKings entering Week 5), is a commercial star. He has endorsed Nike, New Era, New Balance, Nationwide and Natrol Sleep, and that's just the part of his portfolio that begins with "N." As the Bills (3-1) prepare for their "Monday Night Football" showdown at the Los Angeles Rams (2-2) at SoFi Stadium (8:15 p.m. ET, ESPN), the prospect of having to perform in Hollywood for a national TV audience will hardly be novel for Allen -- who in addition to his commercial work is also CEO of his own production studio and is married to an Academy Award nominated Marvel superhero actress Hailee Steinfeld.
"I just try to be myself," Allen said when asked if there's a trick to being a successful commercial actor. "I just kinda wing it."
It's a Wonderful life
Wonderful Pistachios had its pick of three days.
Between Allen's commitments to his new marriage, newborn daughter, practices, workouts and other work ventures, he had only six to eight hours on one of three summer days to be in Los Angeles to film a quartet of TV spots, which are set to debut during Monday's game.
As Allen points out in the ads, his family owns a pistachio farm, making the partnership with Wonderful as much a business endeavor as a pitchman job. But ask Wonderful's chief creative officer Bobby Pearce and executive creative director Steve Yee, and they'll tell you Allen's behavior on set hardly portrays that of someone viewing this relationship transactionally.
"He wasn't the kind of athlete or celebrity who as soon as he's done with his shot he's running back to his trailer," Yee told ESPN. "He's hanging out with us and sitting amongst us at Video Village. He's just really cool and chill."
"He's just curious," Pearce adds. "He wants to look at the process. He's like 'Did I do that right? Did I give you what you need?'"
If anything, the Wonderful cohort points toward Allen being a little too friendly on set. He gets to know cast and crew. He banters. In Year 1 of their partnership, Allen and his co-star spent so much time laughing with each other that the producers had to ask them to settle down.
It would be one thing if this experience was unique to Wonderful. But it really isn't.
"It's almost like he became buds with people on set a little bit, people we've worked with. Which is kind of unusual," Bower said. "Athletes, or talents in general, tend to be quite cloistered and separated off. It makes sense why that would be the case. But in the small moments between takes [Allen] seemed to be joking around and being friendly with regular people that were on set."
"People will ask me after they know what I do 'Is this person really as nice as they seem on television?'" adds Rebekah Lyle, chief marketing officer for Vytalogy Wellness, parent company for Natrol. "I think Josh is one of those individuals where I'm always proud to say 'yes.' I think the person you imagine of who he would be is really genuinely who you get to interact with when you're with him on set."
Allen's backstory says it all
Allen's family doesn't own a Gatorade bottling plant, so that partnership trades a little bit more in Allen's status as a football star. To Bower, Allen's origin story of emailing more than 1,000 college coaches and coordinators seeking a scholarship but received only two offers was his everyman hook before ending up at Wyoming.
The campaign didn't traffic in mythological boasts about Allen's arm strength. Gatorade bet on Allen's persistence resonating with viewers who also believe greatness lies within them.
Natrol went the other way. It identified Allen as a busy husband and father with a hectic life who prioritizes sleep and wellness, a superstar avatar for the workday public.
And while Wonderful had no problem leaning into the farmer image, it also values him as a celebrity who it believes transcends sports. Pearce jokes that Wonderful founder Stewart Resnick knows only two athletes by name: Allen and LeBron James.
Commercial shoots are hectic. Allen's most recent Wonderful shoot was interrupted first by a Bills superfan attempting to sneak onto set by posing as an ESPN reporter (his comically large collection of Bills hats and pins gave him away) and later by a police lockdown nearby that sealed off the 2-mile radius outside the studio and made it impossible for production assistants to go out on coffee runs.
Amid all that, Allen played. Pearce swears by his theory that Allen took acting lessons between Year 1 and Year 2 of working with Wonderful. (He didn't, but he says his wife helped him out.) In one of the soon-to-be-released ads, Allen didn't know he would have to react to a surprise reveal of a blocking dummy wearing a jockstrap. Per Pearce, Allen's improvised reaction made it to the final edit.
According to the Forbes list of the world's highest paid athletes in 2026, only Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes makes more money in off-field earnings ($28 million) than Allen does ($17.5 million) among NFL players. Per the Forbes report, no other NFL player made more than $5 million in off-field earnings. When factoring out international soccer stars and athletes who compete in individual sports like golf and tennis, Allen ranks as the 10th-highest paid athlete by off-field earnings in major American team sports.
Factor in Allen's $55.1 million salary and Forbes has him ranked 22nd in the world for 2026, right between Ravens QB Lamar Jackson and YouTube star turned boxer Jake Paul.
Based on internal research shared with ESPN, the ads are effective. Wonderful commissioned a third-party survey of 2,647 participants to evaluate the commercials. Two-thirds of participants rated Allen as a good fit for the brand and 41% of viewers said the ads made them more likely to purchase Wonderful Pistachios.
Then there's the effect Allen had on the folks he worked with. Yee keeps a bobblehead of Allen riding a tractor in his office and a framed photo of Allen with the cast and crew on his desk.
"What comes across for me with Josh is he looks like he's having fun," Yee says, trying to sum up why he's proud of the ads. "I think he is. That's a difference. A lot of times when a camera turns on, people freeze up. He's cool as a cucumber."